Animal Welfare (Responsibility for Dog Attacks) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Lord and Anna Firth

2nd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, which is absolutely right. This is about placing responsibility on the owner, not criminalising the dog itself. That is exactly why I am bringing forward this private Member’s Bill.

When I first introduced the Bill, I was contacted by many dog owners up and down the country, who shared heartbreaking tales about the loss of their treasured dogs. Many of them have contacted me again and are delighted that the Bill is being reintroduced today. Let me deal first with the scale of the problem. The Minister knows that, in order to support Michael, I submitted freedom of information requests to all 43 territorial police forces in the UK, asking whether they record dog-on-dog attacks as a separate offence and, if so, how many they have recorded over the last five years. Shockingly, only 14 police forces currently record a dog-a-dog attack as a separate incident. In 2016, they recorded a total of 1,700 dog-on-dog attacks. Five years on, the number had skyrocketed: in 2021, the same 14 police forces recorded 11,559 dog-on-dog attacks—a 700% increase—with a shocking 2,264 in London alone. The true incidence of dog-on-dog attacks is likely to be even higher, because the fact that a police force does not record dog-on-dog attacks as separate offences does not mean that they are not happening.

On the current legislative framework, laws have been strengthened in recent years to protect the public where a dog presents a risk to public safety—whether in public or in private—but it remains the case that a dog owner is not automatically liable for any form of criminal prosecution when their dog fatally injures another, unless the other dog is a guide, assistance or service dog, the dog bites a human, or

“there are grounds for reasonable apprehension that it will injure any person”.

That sounds good—it is an objective test—but it is not universally applied, and the proof of the pudding is what happened in Michael’s case. He was asked whether he wanted to press for some sort of prosecution, but he said that he had not feared for his own safety. It had been clear that the dog was going for the smaller dog, and Michael did not fear that there was a danger to himself at that point. The law does not adequately cover this type of incident, and pet dogs should have the same protection as guide, assistance and service dogs, because the loss that is felt by a family following the death of their beloved companion is the same, if not more.

[Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an eloquent speech. Some of the most distressing cases that have come into my inbox over the years have involved a precious pet facing these sorts of circumstances. I completely agree with her that, if we can make laws to protect guide dogs and assistance dogs, we should be able to do the same for precious pets, which mean so much to so many families.

[Anna Firth]

I agree. That is exactly what this Bill—Emilie’s law—seeks to do. It will close the loophole and deal with this issue as a matter of animal welfare, placing responsibility on the dog owner. It is not about dogs, because dogs have owners. The owners should be responsible.